For nearly two decades, Shunji Usui has been a fixture at Urawa Red Diamonds matches at the Saitama Stadium in the suburbs of Tokyo, a face in the crowd among the most avid — and sometimes rabid — fans of any Japanese soccer club.
In recent weeks, though, Usui’s pride in the former Asian champions has been tempered by embarrassment that the team he loves has been held up as a symbol of the kind of intolerance critics say has been emboldened by the conservative politics of Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe.
On March 8, a banner with “Japanese Only” scrawled on it was hoisted on a stadium gate behind one goal, an area packed with thousands of the club’s hardcore fans. Despite complaints from onlookers, it remained in place until the end of the game.
Photo: Reuters
In response, the Mitsubishi Motors-owned club was given the harshest punishment in the two-decade history of professional soccer in Japan — a J-League order that it play before an empty stadium.
That cost Urawa more than US$1 million in lost ticket sales. In addition, more than 10 Reds supporter groups, including UB Snake, the group responsible for the banner, were disbanded.
When the Reds returned home for a domestic cup game this week, flags and drums were banned, essentially putting fans on probation. The only banner allowed was one held up by a club official warning fans against discriminatory behavior.
“There are people who hate foreigners in Japan, and there are people who hate foreigners in this stadium,” said Usui, 53, a teacher at a local school. “By quietly standing by, we gave them a platform to voice such views, so it’s fair enough that now we have to pay for this.”
Although Japanese soccer has not suffered from the sort of hooliganism that has so often blighted the game in Europe and South America, Reds fans have a record of rowdiness.
In 2008, the club was fined nearly US$200,000 after a scuffle involving Gamba Osaka fans. In November last year, Urawa were fined US$96,000 after fans set off firecrackers near the bus of a rival team.
Supporters have also displayed the Rising Sun flag, a symbol used by the Japanese army during its colonization of Asia in the first half of last century that is seen by many as a painful reminder of Japan’s militaristic past.
However, the most recent incident in Urawa, which comes as Japan begins preparations for the 2020 Olympics, reignited a debate about Japanese identity and attitudes toward foreigners.
Many Urawa fans — and players — were quick to denounce the exclusionary banner.
Last week, more than a quarter of the 20,000 Reds fans who turned up for the first open-door home match since the incident signed a declaration condemning discrimination.
Urawa centerback Tomoaki Makino tweeted a picture of the controversial banner to his 177,000 followers and criticized fan behavior.
“My biggest regret is we didn’t take the flag down quickly enough,” Urawa president Keizo Fuchita said last week, vowing a zero-tolerance policy in the future.
However, critics see a worrying trend that goes beyond soccer.
Last year, hundreds of nationalists marched through the streets of Tokyo’s Korean district, Shin Okubo, with signs labeling Koreans as “cockroaches” and saying “Sink Koreans in the Tokyo Bay.”
Some human rights lawyers say Abe’s visit in December last year to the Yasukuni Shrine, which honors Japan’s wartime leaders, and controversial statements about history by those in his circle have created a climate that encourages far right sentiment.
The chairman of public broadcaster NHK, Katsuto Momii, made remarks, later retracted, that appeared to justify Japan’s wartime military brothels, saying all warring nations had similar institutions.
Another member of the NHK governing board, Abe appointment and prominent novelist Naoki Hyakuta, has said the Tokyo war tribunal after World War II was set up to cover up US atrocities.
“The very fact that those who put up the banner thought they would get away with it shows how people here don’t understand what racial discrimination means,” said Yoshiro Tanaka, holding his two-year-old daughter Yuzui on his lap behind Urawa’s goal at a game last week.
Like many other fans, Tanaka said what happened was not representative of the majority of Urawa supporters.
However, also like others, he feels sorry he let it go unchallenged.
“There’s a general mood that just allowed that kind of behavior to happen,” Tanaka said.
On Wednesday, Tanaka and his daughter watched as Urawa’s Tadanari Lee, a player of Korean heritage who was born in Tokyo, but only obtained Japanese nationality in 2007, scored one goal and set up a second, a dramatic winner three minutes from time.
“I’m so glad we managed to come back after the scandal with a win,” Tanaka said. “We must create a place that will be inclusive for everyone, so that my daughter and I can keep coming back for many years to come.”
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier